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Apr 29

Obamacare: Unaffordable Coverage

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by Stephen Lendman

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) co-founders Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein examined evidence on “skimpy health insurance among low-income, insured Americans.”

A PNHP press release said:

“(E)xtensive data (show) that tens of millions of insured Americans have grossly inadequate coverage.”

The underinsurance problem grows. The Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM) approved publication of their analysis.

It’s titled “Life or Debt: Underinsurance in America.” It’ll appear next week. Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased the problem.

According to Himmelstein, it’s “lowering the bar for health insurance.”

“The new coverage sold through the insurance exchanges will leave many families paying 40 percent of their health costs out-of-pocket even after they’ve laid out thousands for premiums.”

“And the administration is allowing states to institute co-payments under Medicaid, even for the poorest of the poor.”

Under ACA, “a 56-year-old making $46,100 will pay a premium of $10,585 for coverage through the exchange and still face up to $6,250 in co-payments and deductibles.”

Woolhandler added:

“Over the past 25 years the financial protection offered by health insurance has steadily eroded. The consequences are grave, not only financially but also medically.”

“For instance, we know that heart attack patients who face high co-payments delay coming to the ER, threatening their lives.”

Underinsurance is the new normal. ACA “will reduce the number of uninsured from 50 million to 30 million, but the new coverage is full of holes.”

“Americans deserve the kind of first-dollar, comprehensive coverage that Canadians already have.”

“But that’s only affordable under a single-payer system that cuts out the private insurance middlemen.”

Growing millions of Americans face life or debt. A 56-year-old earning $45,900 (399% of poverty) qualifies for Bronze coverage. It costs an estimated $4,361.

Covered services require $4,167 more for deductibles and co-payments.

At 401% of poverty ($46,100), subsidies disappear. Himmelstein explained. Premium costs are $10,585. Deductibles and co-payments add another $6,250.

Growing millions can’t afford it. Ralph Nader called ACA “a pay-or-die” system. It underinsures. It leaves millions out. It’s unaffordable. It’s more deform than reform. It’s a scam.

It’s a healthcare rationing scheme. It’s a boon to predatory providers. It’s a plan to enrich insurers, drug companies, and large hospital chains.

It does nothing to control costs. They’re spiraling out of control.

Himmelstein and Woolhandler called cost-sharing “neither necessary nor particularly effective for cost control.” Clear evidence proves it.

America has high cost-sharing. Its costs are highest by far. In 1981, Canada outlawed co-payments and deductibles. It’s had “faster health improvement and slowed cost growth.”

Canadian provinces control costs. They do so by “tax-based funding, global hospital budgeting, binding, negotiated physician fee schedules, and a simple unified single-payer structure….”

Administrative burdens and costs are minimized. Scotland considers patients owners of their health care system, not customers. Its costs are half what Americans pay.

A stealth scheme plans to weaken Medicare. Doing so will force millions of low-income recipients into predatory private plans.

A JGIM companion article headlined “Prevalence and Predictors of Underinsurance Among Low-Income Adults.” Hema Magge was lead writer.

Under ACA, she said, millions of Americans “will gain Medicaid or private insurance in 2014.” Research shows that many middle-income adults are underinsured.

Less is known about underinsurance among low-income adults. More than one-third aren’t properly covered. Over one quarter of Medicaid recipients are underinsured.

Cost-related barriers among public and private care providers reflect a major growing problem.

On April 25, Charleston, W. VA Gazette editors headlined “Health: ‘Medicare for all.’ “

PNHP’s Andrew Coates was quoted, saying:

Healthcare costs keep rising. ACA is an experiment doomed to fail. “At the root of this problem is the private health industry….” Large private insurers, drug giants, and hospital chains are beholden to Wall Street and shareholders.

Insurers profit by denying claims, raising premiums, and requiring higher co-payments and deductibles.

“They also drag down our health system with the costly paperwork and bureaucracy they inflict on doctors, hospitals and patients.”

“By replacing the private insurers with a streamlined single-payer system, we can save over $400 billion squandered annually on wasteful paperwork. That’s enough money to cover all of the uninsured and to eliminate all co-pays and deductibles.”

Gazette editors called his solution “exactly on target. It’s shameful that America is the only modern democracy without a national health system covering everyone.”

“(M)edical care should be a human right for all.”

Obamacare denies it. It requires virtually everyone to have health insurance. Millions unable to afford employer coverage will be ineligible for federal financial aid. On January 1, 2014, fully-certfied health insurance exchanges become operational.

Uninsured middle-income households eligible for subsidized private coverage may use them. Safety-net programs are for low-income households.

According to First Focus president Bruce Lesley, up to 500,000 children may remain uninsured. “The children’s community is disappointed by the administration’s decision to deny access to coverage for children based on a bogus definition of affordability,” he said.

ACA stipulates that coverage can’t cost more than 9.5% of family income. Recipients it considers able to buy insurance are ineligible for subsidies.

Affordability is based on individuals. Family coverage is nearly threefold higher. If employers don’t provide it, recipients are out of luck.

It bears repeating. ACA is a scam. Obama and Congress are beholden to Big Money interests. Washington is corporate occupied territory.

The business of America is business. Every agency is infested with industry officials and lobbyists. They control policy. What they want, they get. Ordinary people are betrayed.

ACA is one of many examples. It made America’s dysfunctional healthcare system worse. It enriches providers. It sacrifices health for greater profits.

It’s unaffordable. It doesn’t protect. It underinsures. It forces millions to choose between life or debt. It reflects irresponsible governance. Obama bears full responsibility.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/obamacare-unaffordable-coverage/

Jun 30

Big Win for Predatory Healthcare Giants

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by Stephen Lendman

 

At issue was National Federation of Independent Business, et al, Petitioners v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al (NFIB v. Sebelius).

 

Voting 5 – 4 on Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld what should have been rejected. Pro-business High Court rulings aren’t new.

 

Since the 19th century, what business wants matters most. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway stands out. It granted corporations legal personhood.

 

Ever since, they’ve had people rights without responsibilities. Their limited liability status exempts them. As a result, they’ve profited hugely and continue winning favorable high and lower court rulings.

 

Another big one came on June 28. Health giants won. People lost. At issue was challenging Obama’s Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (PPACA) – aka Obamacare.

 

From March 26 – 28, oral arguments on its constitutionality were heard. Contentious issues include:

 

  • mandating all adults have health insurance or be taxed to compensate;

 

  • PPACA’s Medicaid expansion provisions;

 

  • whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars courts from reviewing the individual mandate until it’s effective in January 2014; and

 

  • “severability:” namely, whether one issue can be struck down while leaving others intact.

 

Many PPACA provisions took effect. Key ones, including the individual mandate, begin January 2014.

 

Twenty-six states sued to overturn Obamacare. The Supreme Court heard the Florida case. It included the others as plaintiffs.

 

A record pro and con 136 amicus briefs (“friends of the court”) were filed for Court consideration.

 

In 2010, Ralph Nader called Obamacare a boon to predatory giants. They profit hugely. Ordinary people lose. Nader called PPACA “a pay-or-die system that’s the disgrace of the Western world.”

 

Former CIGNA vice president Wendell Potter said Obamacare shifts costs to consumers, offers inadequate or unaffordable access, forces Americans to pay higher deductibles for less coverage, and ends up scamming them.

 

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) headlined their press release ” ‘Health law upheld, but health needs still unmet:’ national doctors group,” saying:

 

Modest PPACA benefits don’t remedy “our health care crisis.”

 

Unresolved issues include:

 

  • excluding a public option and universal coverage;

 

  • millions left uninsured;

 

  • many more underinsured;

 

  • unaffordability for most people “because of high co-pays and gaps in coverage that leave patients vulnerable to financial ruin in the event of serious illness;” and

 

  • rising predatory costs.

 

At issue is empowering private insurers. They “siphon off hundreds of billions of health care dollars for overhead, profit and the paperwork (they) demands from doctors and hospitals.”

 

Bottom line priorities deny care by making it unaffordable for millions. They and other industry giants obstruct reform.

 

In contrast, universal coverage assures comprehensive affordable care. Predatory middlemen are excluded. Doing so saves $400 billion annually. Using it for care instead of profits covers everyone.

 

Comparable state plans failed. Residents were betrayed. So-called reforms “founder(ed) on the shoals of skyrocketing costs, even as the private insurers have continued to amass vast fortunes.”

 

Medicare for all offers real reform. Everyone in. No one out. Healthcare is a universal right. Commodifying it has no place in free societies. It’s always been that way in America.

 

Reform efforts never worked. Lobby power blocked them. In 1917, 15 states introduced a standard health insurance bill. Eight others established commissions to study the issue. Proposals were weak and confusing. They were dead on arrival.

 

In the 1930 and 1940s, government-sponsored health insurance resurfaced. The issue remained contentious. Industry giants again blocked change.

 

Post-war, employer-provided coverage increased. Retirees, the disabled, unemployed, and others were uninsured. After years of debate, Medicare and Medicare included them.

 

Nonetheless, efforts to cover everyone affordably failed. PPACA is the latest example. It’s a rationing scheme to enrich insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains.

 

PNHP speaks for millions saying:

 

“What is truly unrealistic is believing that we can provide universal and affordable health care in a system dominated by private insurers and Big Pharma.”

 

“The American people desperately need a universal health system that delivers comprehensive, equitable, compassionate and high-quality care, with free choice of provider and no financial barriers to access.”

 

Convoluted arguments upheld PPACA’s controversial individual mandate provision. It requires purchasing coverage from private insurers.

 

Ruling with the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said:

 

“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.”

 

“The federal government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance.”

 

“Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.”

 

He added that he and other majority justices abstained on judging whether passing PPACA was right or wrong.

 

“Those decisions are entrusted to our nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them,” he said. “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

 

Anthony Kennedy disagreed. He called the law an affront to individual liberty and should have been entirely rejected.

 

“The values that should have determined our course today are caution, minimalism and the understanding that the federal government is one of limited powers,” he said. “The court’s ruling undermines those values at every turn.”

 

“The act requires the purchase of health insurance and punishes violation of that mandate with a penalty,” he added.

 

“But what Congress called a ‘penalty,’ the court calls a tax. What Congress called a ‘requirement,’ the court calls an option….In short, the court imposes a tax when Congress deliberately rejected a tax.”

 

At the same time, majority justices rejected the administration’s main argument about congressional authorization to regulate interstate commerce.

 

The Commerce Clause doesn’t give legislators the right to require people buy health insurance, they said.

 

It’s “not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave, simply because he will predictably engage in particular transactions,” said Roberts.

 

In a separate opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called arguments against the Commerce Clause “stunningly retrogressive.”

 

It represents pre-New Deal rulings “in which the Court routinely thwarted Congress’ efforts to regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it.”

 

In other words, the Court restricted congressional authority to pass social welfare laws. Doing so makes planned cuts easier.

 

The ruling also limited Medicaid’s expansion. Seven justices said Congress exceeded its constitutional authority to coerce states to participate by threatening to cut off federal funds. They can opt out of Medicaid’s expansion if they wish.

 

Doing so undermines efforts to cover individuals under age 65 with incomes of 133% above poverty or less. Around 11 million Medicaid recipients are affected. They already receive minimal care.

 

Experts say America’s poorest are left in “no-man’s land.” They’ll be uncovered by federal benefits and ineligible for subsidized insurance.

 

PPACA provides 100% of funds to expand Medicaid until 2016. Thereafter, it’s 90%. Until now, federal funding required state participation. No longer. Millions will be harmed. Many will be left out entirely.

 

Medicaid expansion provided coverage for around 17 million Americans by 2019. States now can opt out at their discretion.

 

Matt Solo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors said states have a major decision to make.

 

“There is a real debate here where states are going to have to weigh leaving huge amounts of federal dollars on the table versus accepting potential exposure in the future. Before, you just had to just hold your nose and do it,” he said.

 

He’s not sure what states will do. He called the Court decision “a total surprise.” It will greatly impact PPACA’s future, he believes.

 

According to Professor Sara Rosenbaum:

 

“The practical effect….will make the Medicaid expansions go more slowly.”

 

Future court decisions may have to distinguish between new programs or additions to existing ones. Budget strapped states seek new ways to cut costs. This ruling adds leverage. It lets them do it on the backs of residents most needing help.

 

Professor Adam Winkler said:

 

“It will be interesting to see what happens in the 26 states that challenged Obamacare. Will they go through with their threats of not expanding their own Medicaid coverage? Or will the promise of federal money persuade them to expand coverage?”

 

Opting in assures full federal coverage for three years. At the same time, Congress plans major Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, disability, education, and other social benefits cuts post-election.

 

Both parties agree. It’s part of an earlier struck “grand bargain” no matter which party controls the White House and/or Congress.

 

Regardless of how the High Court ruled, expect bipartisan congressional support to inflict the most harm. Social America is fast eroding. Party leaders plan ending it entirely.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

 

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

 

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

Mar 26

Challenging Obamacare

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Challenging Obamacare

 

by Stephen Lendman

 

Last November, the Supreme Court agreed to hear challenge arguments against Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) – aka Obamacare.

 

From March 26 – 28, oral arguments on PPACA’s constitutionality will be heard, especially certain provisions. A decision is expected by June.

 

Contentious issues include:

  • mandating all adults have health insurance or be taxed to compensate;
  • PPACA’s Medicaid expansion provisions; and
  • whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars courts from reviewing the individual mandate until it’s effective in January 2014; “severability” also is also at issue: namely, whether one issue can be struck down while leaving others intact.

 

Many of PPACA’s provisions took effect. Others, including the individual mandate, begin in January 2014. “Severability” opponents say PPACA provisions are too interconnected to permit striking it.

 

Lower courts differed on its constitutionality. Last June, the Six Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it based on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. In August, a Florida district judge ruled it unconstitutional. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his decision. It found PPACA could stand if the individual mandate’s removed.

 

Last November, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia also upheld the individual mandate based on the Commerce Clause.

 

The Supreme Court chose to review the Florida case. It includes 25 other states as plaintiffs, as well as the National Federation of Independent Business.

 

In addition, 136 amicus briefs (“friends of the court”) were filed for Court consideration. It’s a third more than the previous record number.

 

Appellate lawyers specializing in preparing them say they cost from $25,000 – $50,000 each. During the Court’s last term, justices cited only 8% of 628 NGO briefs filed. Of those, around half were written by prominent Washington-based attorneys specializing in Supreme Court cases.

 

Former Justice John Paul Stevens complained of amici fatigue. Justice Antonin Scalia said he lets law clerks read them. As a result, groups filing them face stiff headwinds.

 

The High Court could rule several ways, including:

  • striking the entire law, including the individual mandate;
  • upholding the entire law;
  • striking the individual mandate alone; or
  • delay ruling for now.

 

In the meantime, debate again takes center stage, at least for a few days before again erupting when the Court rules in June.

 

PPACA: A Boon to Industry Predators

 

In 2010, Ralph Nader called Obamacare a sellout to Big PhAMA and other healthcare giants, saying:

 

It doesn’t “provide universal, comprehensive or affordable care to the American people. It shovels hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money (to predators that) created the problem.”

 

“It requires no contractual accountability or other benefits for people denied coverage under a pay-or-die system that’s the disgrace of the Western world.”

 

There’s no public option. Millions are left uninsured, millions more underinsured, and as poverty increases, so will their ranks exponentially.

 

“There’s (also) no free choice of doctor and hospital under this. There’s all kinds of exploit(ive provisions to let) health insurance (and drug) companies continue their ravenous ways over people who are (the) most vulnerable….when they’re sick or injured.”

 

Former CIGNA vice president, Wendell Potter said Obamacare lets insurers shift costs to consumers, offer inadequate or unaffordable access, force Americans to pay higher deductibles for less coverage, and end up scamming them.

 

“What worries me,” he said, “is that people who are forced to buy coverage and all they can afford to buy is a high deductible. (So) if they get really sick, they have to pay so much out of their own pockets that they’re going to be filing for bankruptcy or (lose) their homes.”

 

What the 1913 Federal Reserve Act did for bankers, PPACA may do for insurance, PhAMA, and hospital chain predators. Controlling one-sixth of the economy, they’re more than ever able to game the system by:

  • making it dysfunctionally worse;
  • selling junk insurance, leaving millions underinsured;
  • keeping premiums unaffordable for full coverage;
  • adding high deductibles and co-pays for less coverage;
  • denying care by delaying, contesting, or preventing access;
  • letting pharmaceutical companies provide toxic drugs at unaffordable prices, and avoid generic competition on new products by lengthy patent protection periods;
  • assuring providers more customers and higher profits by requiring individuals and families buy insurance or be penalized; and
  • by 2018, imposing an excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” plans to cut corporate costs, make workers pay more, force many to settle for less, be underinsured, and unable to obtain costly care without paying for what they can’t afford.

 

In March 2010, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) took “no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer.”

 

Instead of fixing the “the profit-driven, private health insurance industry….this costly new legislation enrich(es) and further entrench(es it by forcing) millions of Americans to buy” defective coverage.

 

As a result, they’re worse off at a cost of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars given predators to game the system for profit.

 

Problems PNHP listed included:

  • 23 million or more Americans will be uninsured; it “translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering;”
  • millions will be forced to buy insurance “costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering” only 70% of their expenses; they’ll be left one serious health emergency away from bankruptcy and/or loss of their homes; moreover as costs rise, affordability declines proportionately;
  • for most people, good policies are unaffordable or “too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles;”
  • insurers get around $450 billion in public money “to subsidize (buying) their shoddy products;” they and other industry giants are also more than ever emboldened to block future reform;
  • safety-net hospitals lose billions in Medicare and Medicaid payments; tens of millions of under and uninsured are left vulnerable without care when they most need it;
  • workers with employer-based coverage face higher costs, fewer benefits, and restrictions on selecting providers;
  • most will be hamstrung with future stiff costs because of unrestricted premium hikes, higher deductibles and co-pays;
  • costs keep rising exponentially because Obamacare doesn’t contain them; providers can raise prices freely;
  • so-called new regulations (like ending pre-existing condition denials) are riddled with loopholes, ambiguities, and legal interpretations to let insurers manipulate them advantageously; and
  • “women’s reproductive rights (are) further eroded, thanks to the burdensome segregation of insurance funds for abortion and all other medical services.”

 

In other words, PPACA scammed the public with a package of expensive mandates, new taxes, sweetheart deals, and “a perpetuation of the fragmented, dysfunctional, and unsustainable system that is taking such a heavy toll on our health and economy today.”

 

It gets worse. Last summer, a study showed nearly one in 10 large and mid-sized companies planned to stop providing healthcare to employees by 2014. Another one suggested close to a third opting out once all PPACA provisions take effect.

 

Moreover, one in three employers provide temp or part-time workers no coverage. Expect that percentage to rise sharply.

 

Businesses with over 50 employees dropping coverage face fines up to $2,000 for each not covered. Providing it costs much more. In addition, most others providing insurance plan shifting more costs to workers.

 

Except for the very poor, households (individual or family) face 2% of income penalties.

 

PPACA’s a can of worms. Industry predators alone benefit. Growing millions are on their own out of luck.

 

No Debate on Universal Coverage

 

The Supreme Court challenge excludes the only equitable, effective solution: universal government provided full single-payer coverage, including dental, drugs, and everything else health related.

 

Everyone in. Nobody out, except industry predators able to game the system for profits at the public’s expense.

 

A Final Comment

 

Now age 88, Arnold S. Relman is Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus and former New England Journal of Medicine editor-in-chief.

 

Ahead of PPACA’s enactment, he said “our health policies have failed to meet national needs because they have been heavily influenced by the delusion that medical care is essentially a business.”

 

Current proposals “for a more ‘consumer-driven’ health system are likely to make our predicament even worse. A different kind of approach could solve our problems, but it would mean a major reform of the entire system, not only the way it is financed and insured, but also how physicians are organized in practice and how they are paid.”

 

In 1980, he called America’s health system the “medical-industrial complex,” or in his assessment, a danger equivalent to Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex.”

 

He said market-based medicine assures unaffordability, “variable quality,” and inequity for millions. Only bottom line priorities matter. Patient needs are sorely neglected.

 

“Our present medical care system lacks the structure and incentives to provide proper care….A real solution to our crisis will not be found until the public, the medical profession, and the government reject the prevailing delusion that health care is best left to market forces.”

 

“Once it is acknowledged that the market is inherently unable to deliver the kind of health care system we need, we can begin to develop the ‘nonmarket’ arrangements for the system we want.”

 

On March 19, The New York Times published Relman’s letter headlined, “The Health Law Mandate,” saying:

 

The Times’ March 9 article titled, “White House Set to Shape Debate Over Health Law” omits a key argument against PPACA’s “mandated purchase of private insurance, the key issue before the Supreme Court.”

 

He said 50 doctors and two nonprofit organizations filed an amicus brief. It argued that “Congress could avoid a mandate by legislating a national single-payer system that provides nearly universal insurance coverage.”

 

Though flawed, comparable systems exist – Medicare and veterans’ health benefits. “(N)o legal barriers prevent doing more.”

 

“Since a mandate isn’t necessary for Congress to exercise its legitimate role in regulating health insurance, there is no justification under the Constitution’s ‘necessary and proper’ clause for such a legislative requirement.”

 

How this argument influences the Court “remains to be seen. But the brief is another reminder that the single-payer idea, although currently off the table in Washington, should not be counted out.”

 

It’s all that’s worth counting in as the only acceptable alternative. Healthcare’s a vital need, a universal right no just society should deny all its citizens and permanent residents.

 

America isn’t just and never was. That’s the core issue. The High Court won’t touch or resolve it.

 

People power alone can with commitment enough to accept nothing less than equity and justice for all, and not just on healthcare.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Dec 23

Medicare Privatization Plans

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Medicare Privatization Plans – by Stephen Lendman

 

The idea’s been around for years. More recently, bipartisan support’s been growing. Various plans have circulated.

 

A 2006 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study assessed “Designing a Premium Support System (PSS) for Medicare.” It discussed pros, cons, other choices and implications in terms of costs and recipient benefits.

 

In 1995, Henry Aaron and Robert Reischauer first proposed PSS based on managed competition principles. Numerous variations followed with differing public support amounts.

 

All plans have six common features:

 

(1) Beneficiaries would choose from multiple approved health plans. Risk adjusted payments and marketing practices would be regulated, or so it’s claimed.

 

(2) Plans would offer a premium bid to cover core benefits.

 

(3) Federal payments would reflect these bids, subject to negotiations.

 

(4) Washington would provide beneficiaries a fixed premium subsidy tied to annual health plan bids.

 

(5) They’d vary depending on plans selected. Beneficiaries would pay differential costs.

 

(6) Traditional Medicare would compete on similar terms with private plans, including on price.

 

A March 1999, Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare approved a premium support plan proposed by then-Commission chairman Senator John Breaux.

 

Though it failed to get a supermajority needed for official recommendation to Congress, it gained widespread support and became a prominent option in subsequent Medicare reform debates.

 

Proponents claim it relies on marketplace medicine to secure sustainability long-term. They falsely say Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cause rising deficits and America’s national debt burden.

 

They also bogusly claim Medicare and Social Security are going broke. When properly administered, in fact, both programs are sustainable long-term with modest adjustments and by curtailing escalating healthcare costs responsibly.

 

If capital gains were taxed like income, huge amounts would be raised for traditional Medicare, prescription drugs under Part D, Medicaid, and other social programs. Instead, they’re on the chopping block for big cuts before privatization en route to eliminating them altogether.

 

In contrast, under a universal single-payer system, Medicare would be sustainable long-term. Eliminating private insurer middlemen alone achieves dramatic cost savings.

 

In its September 2007 report to Congress, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) compared 2004 US healthcare spending with other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries.

 

It found America spent $6,102 per person (today it’s over $8,000), well over double the $2,560 average for other OECD countries. Much of the difference comes from insurer administrative costs providing no care. Other OECD countries deliver better overall services at less than half what Americans spend.

 

Premium support and similar plans are steps toward destroying Medicare altogether, first by privatizing it for profit. Breaux’s plan set federal premium subsidies at 88% of the nationally weighted average.

 

Beneficiaries choosing plans costing less than 85% of the average would pay no premium. Those selecting higher benefit plans would cover extra charges.

 

Plans (allegedly) would have to provide benefits equal to current Medicare coverage, though they could offer additional benefits. They’d also be updated annually based on individual choice.

 

Savings are alleged to come from beneficiaries selecting lower cost options, price competition to attract enrollees, and letting recipients purchase Medigap coverage for added benefits.

 

Reality differs markedly from claims. Only universal coverage achieves major savings. Alternatives don’t. Independent studies confirm it.

 

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) says America spends double the developed world’s healthcare average, yet performs poorly on key indicators like life expectancy, infant mortality, and overall well-being.

 

Currently, middlemen insurers, drug giants and large hospital chains game the system hugely for profits. Medicare for all can change that effectively and achieve major cost savings.

 

Overall, US healthcare could make a quantum improvement leap compared to today’s dysfunctional system. Instead, bipartisan complicity has worse in mind by cutting benefits, placing greater burdens on seniors and others, letting corporate predators game the system, and still leave millions uninsured, on their own and out of luck.

 

Other Destructive Medicare Plans

 

On December 16, the Brookings Institution published “Premium Support: A Primer,” claiming:

 

“The major cause of the federal budget crisis, which is still in its early stages, is the relentless growth of Medicare spending.”

 

Reasons given are baby boomer retirements and “persistent increase” in per person costs. “Unless something is one, Medicare….will grow from 3.6 percent of the nation’s GDP in 2010 to 10.4 percent by 2080.”

 

“Unchecked, growth in spending on Medicare and interest on the federal debt will bankrupt the country.”

 

Five Brookings participants were involved, including Henry Aaron, Alice Rivlin and former Republican Senator Pete Domenici.

 

He and Rivlin also co-chair a Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). In 2010, its budget slashing program was called “Restoring America’s Future.” Implementation would destroy it for millions greatly harmed or entirely left out by their proposals.

 

They include:

  • indexing Social Security benefits to life expectancy to reduce them as longevity increases;

 

  • eliminating annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs); bogusly they claim inflation is overstated; in fact, it way exceeds official numbers, especially medical expenses placing enormous burdens on recipients, including retirees dependent on help;

 

  • instituting a one-year payroll tax holiday for workers and employers to save $650 billion; doing so, in fact, is hugely destructive by draining revenues needed for entitlements;

 

  • sharply cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits by raising premiums, co-pays, and outpatient fees; also establishing privately owned health insurance exchanges to compete with traditional Medicare;

 

  • by 2018, cutting Medicaid by the amount it exceeds GDP growth so needy recipients get less en route to perhaps nothing;

 

  • shielding insurers and drug giants from malpractice suits by making it harder to file them; then capping non-economic and punitive damage awards by adjudicating claims in “specialized malpractice courts;” they’ll, of course, favor providers over consumers;

 

  • simplifying the tax code to two brackets (15 and 27%), favoring the rich; regressively cutting the top personal and corporate tax rate from 35% to 27%;

 

  • eliminating home mortgage and most other deductions and credits;

 

  • taxing employer provided health insurance;

 

  • instituting a 6.5% national sales tax, hitting ordinary people hardest; and

 

  • other regressive schemes, placing added burdens on households least able to cope.

 

Yet BPC outrageously claims their plan “provides a comprehensive, viable path to restore our economy and build a strong America for future generations and for those around the world who look to the United States for leadership and hope.”

 

Dominici is a former US senator. Rivlin once headed the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office. Yet neither understands economics and finance enough to propose workable, constructive policies.

 

Their proposal like others, including Brookings, enriches corporate predators and America’s super-rich at the expense of all others. In other words, it’s another giant wealth transfer scheme, heading the nation for third world status.

 

So is a new bipartisan congressional one Senator Ron Wyden (D. OR) and Representative Paul Ryan (R. WI) proposed to replace traditional Medicare with “premium support” plans.

 

At issue is eventual privatization to free Washington from future obligations. As explained above, beneficiaries would get fixed amounts to purchase private coverage through a federally regulated Medicare exchange.

 

Initially, traditional Medicare would remain optional. Longer-term it will transition to an entirely privately run system. Doing so will put vital care out of reach for millions of seniors when they most need it.

 

The plan closely follows Ryan’s April proposal to transition Medicare toward fixed-sum vouchers. He, other Republicans, and growing numbers of Democrats want government responsibility entirely ended. His new plan temporarily lets it compete with private plans with beneficiaries incurring greater costs.

 

A Final Comment

 

With November 2012 elections approaching, Obama and congressional Democrats may tread lightly around this sensitive issue. Post-election, however, traditional Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and public pensions are on the chopping block for elimination.

 

Privatizations will precede it. Beneficiaries will be more than ever on their own. Eventually they’ll be entirely to free trillions more dollars for warmaking and corporate handouts. Obama’s fully on board. So are most congressional Democrats.

 

Safety net protections will disappear. Americans will be on their own entirely, sink or swim.

 

With one-third of US households impoverished or nearly so, imagine how irresponsible governance will gravely harm millions more.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Nov 26

Bipartisan Deal to Slash Medicare and Medicaid

By No Comments

Bipartisan Deal to Slash Medicare and Medicaid – by Stephen Lendman

 

It’s been planned for years. Republicans want them eliminated. Democrats agreed to incremental cuts to make ending core social contract programs look normal. Slashing Social Security comes later.

 

On November 24, New York Times writer Robert Pear headlined, “Support Builds for a Plan to Rein in Medicare Costs,” saying:

 

Congressional Supercommittee members “built a case for major structural changes in Medicare (and Medicaid) that would limit the government’s open-ended financial commitment….”

 

Privatization is recommended. Republicans and some Democrats agree. Expect more to come on board. Methodology might be to provide beneficiaries fixed sums for private plans. They’ll cost more and deliver less.

 

Proponents call the idea “premium support.” At issue is shifting government’s responsibility to beneficiaries. Washington would pay premiums in increasingly smaller amounts until they bear full responsibility.

 

Doing so will leave seniors entirely on their own for healthcare when they most need it. Unaffordability won’t matter. Understating the problem, John Rother, National Coalition on Health Care president said:

 

“The Supercommittee may have laid the groundwork for future reductions in the growth of Medicare.”

 

In fact, “the gang of 12″ secretly agreed to major cuts on the way to eliminating government’s responsibility for healthcare entirely. After that, attack Social Security.

 

Last year, Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRF) recommended deep Medicare cuts, higher Medicaid co-pays, and restrictions on filing malpractice suits, among other ways to end Washington’s responsibility for healthcare incrementally.

 

The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) also recommended deep Medicare cuts, higher Part B premiums, big co-pays and outpatient fee increases, and establishing privately owned, lower-cost health insurance exchanges to gradually eliminate traditional Medicare. It also wants Medicaid funding cut.

 

Congressional Democrats and Republicans agree on raising Medicare’s eligibility’s age. So does Obama. He also supports deep cuts. Expect his new Independent Payment Advisory Board to recommend them. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said current proposals will force seniors to pay more for coverage, much more.

 

In 2012, bipartisan agreement on Medicare and Medicaid cuts are coming. Backloading will delay pain until after the November 2012 elections. Last June, Vice President Biden agreed to $500 billion in Medicare/Medicaid more cuts on top of previously imposed big ones. Republicans want $780 billion. Splitting the difference is likely. More reductions will come later. Both sides agree.

 

By mid-decade, traditional Medicare will provide half of today’s benefits. Seniors will need private plans for full coverage. Those unable to afford them will be out of luck.

 

Proponents falsely say Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are responsible for rising deficits and America’s national debt burden. They also bogusly claim Medicare and Social Security are going broke. When properly administered, in fact, both programs are sustainable long-term with modest adjustments and by curtailing escalating healthcare costs.

 

Wall Street bailouts, other corporate handouts, excess military spending (including huge black budgets), and tax cuts for the rich caused today’s unsustainable debt problem. Price gouging by health insurance providers, drug companies and large hospital chains exacerbates it

 

Over the past decade, Social Security-run surpluses went for debt reduction to make it appear the fund’s not sustainable. In fact, since 1986, it produced $2.4 trillion more than it spent.

 

Much of the surplus came from increasing the payroll tax and indexing to inflation. Its share of total federal tax revenues rose from less than 30% to 44%. At the same time, corporate income tax amounts fell from around 20% to under 10%.

 

In other words, for a generation, Social Security revenues subsidized corporate handouts, tax cuts for the rich, and America’s wars. Its surplus could be sustainable well into the future if government policies stopped draining it irresponsibly.

 

Moreover, if the full payroll tax is restored and annual $108,600 income cap lifted to make America’s wealthy pay the same percentage cost as others, potential Social Security shortfalls could be eliminated for generations. If draining the trust fund also stopped, surpluses could be generated in perpetuity.

 

In addition, if capital gains were taxed like income, huge amounts would be raised for traditional Medicare, prescription drugs under Part D, Medicaid, and other social programs on the chopping block for big cuts or elimination.

 

Medicare would be just as sustainable with real healthcare reform under a universal single-payer system. By eliminating private insurer middlemen, costs would be drastically cut.

 

In its September 2007 report to Congress, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) compared 2004 US healthcare spending with other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries.

 

It found America spent $6,102 per person, well over double the $2,560 average for other OECD countries. Much of the difference comes from insurer administrative costs providing no care. Other OECD countries deliver better services overall at less than half what Americans spend.

 

Draining Social Security’s trust fund and perpetuating outlandishly high healthcare costs makes it appear that entitlements seniors rely on are going broke.

 

In other words, crisis conditions were artificially created. Congressional cassandras claim Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable. Bipartisan chicanery wants big cuts in both programs before privatizing them on route to eliminating them altogether.

 

Political Washington hypes the problem. So do media scoundrels, Obama’s Simpson/Bowles deficit cutting commission, and the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). Their solution is slash, then end America’s social contract to transfer maximum wealth to corporate favorites and the nation’s super-rich.

 

A Final Comment

 

When responsibly run, Social Security and Medicare are sustainable long-term with plenty left over for Medicaid and other vital programs for America’s needy. Moreover, if corporations and rich elites paid their fair share, the possibilities are limitless.

 

If the business of America became peace, less militarism, no wars, making friends, not enemies, retaining high-paying/good benefit jobs at home, letting unions bargain collectively with management on equal terms, making universal free education and single-payer healthcare priorities, ending destructive trade deals, and guaranteeing living wage security, imagine how different things could be.

 

In addition, if money power returned to public hands and direct democracy serving everyone responsibly replaced duopoly power, near utopian conditions might be realized.

 

Anything is possible when committed people work long-term for them. If that’s not incentive enough, what is?

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Oct 21

Class War in America

By andreaNo Comments

by Stephen Lendman

Class war raged for decades. Business and America’s super-rich always win. In his 1925 short story titled “Rich Boy,” F. Scott Fitzgerald said:

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early…They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we..”

“Even when they enter deep into our world….they still think that that they are better than we are. They are different.”

In his article, titled “The Truth About ‘Class War’ in America,” economist Richard Wolff said:

“The last 50 years have indeed seen continuous class warfare in and over federal economic policies.”

Corporate giants and America’s super-rich waged war against working Americans and won. Notably since the 1970s, “(b)usiness and its allies shifted most of its federal tax burden onto individuals.”

Since WW II, tax rates on super-rich Americans fell from 91% to 35% today. Obama’s deficit cutters want it lowered to 24% along with eliminating some deductions with loopholes to compensate and save others. Moreover, they want the top corporate tax rate slashed from 35% to 26%.

Many corporate giants, in fact, pay minimal or no taxes. Some, like General Electric, get generous rebates in highly profitable years. They game the system, benefitting form tax laws they write. American workers lose out from greater than ever burdens on them.

Obama schemers also want deeper Medicare cuts, higher Medicaid co-pays, and Social Security’s retirement age raised to 69 with lower cost-of-living increases. Privately they want Wall Street to control it to suck out maximum profits, then shut it down entirely.

In addition, they want home mortgage interest and tax-free employer provided health insurance capped or ended.

They represent business and super-rich elites. America’s middle class is targeted for extinction. Since taking office, Obama capitulated to Republicans on preserving tax cuts for America’s super-rich. He gave trillions of dollars to Wall Street crooks and other corporate favorites, including profiteers benefitting greatly from multiple imperial wars on humanity.

At the same time, he stiff-armed budget-strapped states and distressed households. Promising millions of new jobs, he created none. Four years into a Main Street Depression, real unemployment approaches 23%. In ravaged cities like Detroit, it exceeds 50%.

Federal worker wages were frozen and austerity cuts imposed. Examples include Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). Families needing help to heat homes in winter won’t get it. Neither will students relying on Pell Grants.

Other imposed cuts affect:

the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP);

community healthcare centers;

nonprofit health insurance cooperatives;

HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other disease prevention programs;

WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) grants to states for supplemental foods, healthcare, and nutrition education for low-income families;

Head Start, providing comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income families with children;

the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (targeted earlier with more coming), providing food stamps for poor households;

community development block grants for housing, overall reducing HUD’s budget by $1.1 billion;

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) first-responder funding;

energy efficiency and renewable energy programs;

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) clean/safe water and other projects;

National Institutes of Health (NIH) medical research;

the National Park Service;

vital infrastructure and transportation needs; and

other non-defense discretionary spending.

Planned new cuts will sustain Wall Street, militarism, favoritism, waste, fraud, and other rewards for Washington’s usual special interests They benefit at the public trough.

Everyone else gets to eat cake. They’re on their own sink or swim. Obama calls it “shared sacrifice.” Workers sacrifice to let business and super-rich elites share.

Corporate America’s power grab holds US households hostage. Neo-serfdom and debt peonage define their final solution. Wolff calls mainstream economics “faith-based.” For Michael Hudson, it’s “junk economics,” destroying societies to benefit Wall Street and powerful favorites.

According to Wolff:

“In plain English, the last 50 years saw a massive shift of the burden of federal taxation from business to individuals and from rich individuals to everyone else. Class war policies, yes, but a war that victimized the vast majority of working Americans.”

Especially since the 1970s, real wages haven’t keep up with inflation. Benefits steadily eroded. High-paying manufacturing and service jobs went offshore to low-wage countries. Automated production claimed more.

More than ever, “free markets” work best for those who control them. Others lose out, growing numbers entirely.

Technology driven productivity increasingly pressures workers to toil longer for less pay and fewer benefits. Explaining predatory capitalism’s contradictions, Marx indeed was right. He called it anarchic and ungovernable, and what existed in his day was a shadow of today’s monster.

It alienates masses by preventing societies from developing humanely. It produces class struggles between “haves” and “have-nots,” the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and proletariat (workers). It exploits the many for the elite few. Those most privileged populate Wall Street.

It flourishes in America and Western societies. Aided by political opportunists, powerful monopolies and oligopolies now control production, commerce and finance.

Households are angered and traumatized by falling incomes adjusted to inflation. As a result, more family members work more for less. Corporate bosses extract more surplus from pressured workers.

Class war in America isn’t new. Today it rages, pitting private wealth against populist interests.

America’s middle class is on the chopping block for destruction. The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. Complicit with Wall Street and other corporate crooks, they’ve wrecked the economy and working households for profit.

America’s broken system is defined by sacrificing workers on the alter of capitalist excess. Growing numbers understand a venal, depraved, degenerate system. It’s too broken to fix. It’s corrupted, suffocating and malignant.

No wonder millions now rage against it in hundreds of cities nationwide. It was just a matter of time. They’re mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. They worry about no future prospects. They know, or should know, political Washington won’t help.

They’re victimized by institutionalized inequality. Good paying jobs and retirement security are increasingly out of reach.

America’s a kleptocracy run by political criminals complicit with corporate crooks. They strip-mine working households for profit. Systemic corruption benefits at the public’s expense.

America’s no longer fit to live in. Change demands dismantling it and starting over. Vital issues include:

social justice;

returning money power to public hands as the Constitution’s Article 1, Section 8 mandates;

dismantling duopoly political power, replacing it with an entirely new multi-party democracy;

getting money out of politics;

-shutting down insolvent banks;

-prohibiting too-big-to-fail ones;

ending corporate personhood; corporations are businesses, not people;

reinstituting anti-trust laws with teeth, prohibiting monopoly and oligopoly power;

breaking up big media;

making broadcasting a public utility on airwaves belonging equally to everyone, not business giants to exploit with generous subsidies;

prohibiting all corporate handouts, loopholes, and special benefits;

making business pay equitably on all profits;

ending America’s student loan racket;

mandating progressive taxation, including treating income and capital gains equally;

reenergizing organized labor;

ending inequality and persecution;

creating jobs paying living wages;

stressing environmental sanity; and

ending America’s imperial wars.

Hopefully OWS protesters understand dark forces want to co-opt and subvert them. Hopefully they’ll focus on what matters most.

Key is getting money power in public hands and making banking a regulated public utility. Achieving that makes social justice and other vital goals possible.

Millions of Americans and others globally are committed for change. Hopefully they know they’re in the mother of all struggles and will stay the course. It’s how all great victories are won.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Oct 07

As We Occupy the Streets – Accountability Must Be Our First Demand

By andreaNo Comments

As American citizens finally rise up and place our bodies on the gears of power and the avenues of commerce, rightly protesting against the nation’s war mongers, corporate thieves, health insurance gluttons and mass polluters, the most important demand we make must be our call for accountability and justice.

This demand, above all others, is crucial in opening the floodgates of change and truly restoring America to a nation of laws and not men.

Until the stamp of felon is irrevocably emblazoned on the foreheads of our nation’s criminal elite, a perfect storm of unrestrained power and hubris will continue to rage in this country. Only through the path of prosecution and incarceration will we be able to set in motion the systematic collapse of this lawless regime and remove the cloak of legitimacy that empowers it.

With more than 700 peaceful protesters mass corralled on the Brooklyn Bridge and 1252 Keystone XL demonstrators arrested during their two week protest in front of the White House, it is clear that the trend of incarcerating those who stand up to power will continue.

Isn’t it time that we, the citizens, demand that the right people are put behind bars?

In redressing the omission by the congress, the Justice Department and the President of the United States to prosecute our nation’s “most wanted,” we will at last shine a legal spotlight on the inside track of corruption that has dominated this country for over a decade. 

Demanding investigations and trials of the elite one per cent who crashed the world economy, illegally waged a pre-emptive war with impunity, drained our treasury, rounded up and tortured enemy combatants, spied on American citizens, exposed the identity of a CIA counter terrorism operative, and allowed an American city to drown, would be a good start.

With this promising beginning, through the process of legal discovery, the stream of contaminated money flowing in and out of the pockets of the criminal ruling class will at last be revealed to the public, and a game of connect-the-dots prosecution will ensue. As their sordid illegal transactions come to light, a veritable who’s who of our nation’s power elite will become water cooler fodder, and the wheels will begin to come off the cart.

With of reams of video, audio and paper evidence brought forward to convict them, the days of known criminals waltzing carelessly across the corporate media stage will come to end.

Imagine the gap in programming when enemies of state are no longer allowed dominate the public airwaves, shamelessly hocking their books, endorsing their political agendas and weighing in as “experts” on the multiple crises they manufacture.

Had Barrack Obama possessed the political courage to go after these criminals himself on the first day of his presidency, the succeeding prosecutions and resulting shift in public sentiment would have empowered his administration and swept the obstructionists from his path.

Instead, desperate for a kind word on CNN and Fox, he betrayed those who elected him and kowtowed to the real force of power in this nation. Reaching across the aisle to appease the billionaire-backed congressional lap dogs, he squandered any hope we had of defunding our multiple wars, passing genuine heath care reform, seriously addressing the climate crisis, or preventing millions of American families from plunging into poverty.

Ask yourself this – how many bonuses and record profits would the Wall Street felons be capable of raking in with handcuffed wrists?

How many book tours, TV interviews, press junkets and $3,000 dollar a head dinners would George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice or Donald Rumsfeld take part in, once they had been tried and convicted before the American people for war crimes and torture?

How many more voices would cry out for national health care with the CEO’s of the major insurance companies indicted for widespread fraud and patient abuse?

When the heads of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank use prison-issued aluminum toilets instead of golden ones, when Karl Rove is forced to e-mail his column to the Wall Street Journal from a jail cell, rather than a cozy American Crossroads office suite, when the Koch brothers and Eric Prince busily hammer out license plates, Don Blankenship stokes the prison furnaces and Dick Cheney is padlocked into his bunker, the guns of the corporatocracy would be effectively spiked and their power base fractured.

As the star players of the presiding junta are yanked from the national stage and the penitentiaries swell with their ranks, their long term agenda will also fall to the wayside, their shrill cries for unfettered capitalism and union busting effectively drowned out by the clinking of ankle bracelets and the slamming of electronic cell doors.

And lastly, the disgraceful tea party movement, bereft of its billionaire backers, would wander leaderless for a brief time and quickly fritter out; even its misguided, loaded-for-bear “patriots” capable of understanding the significance of a jail cell.

Accountability. Just do it.

In the days and weeks to come, as our numbers overflow in the streets and plazas of our cities, it will be our unwavering demand for accountability and justice that at last succeeds in ousting the criminal elite from the halls of power and forces the doors of this democracy to reopen to the people.

When crime and punishment again carry equal weight in the land of the free,  the fog of deception that has been lingering over the eyes of the masses will at long last begin to clear and our sleeping nation will awaken from its stupor to a restored age, where a long missing precedent will once again reign:

If you break the laws in this land, no matter what rank you hold, no matter what office suite you inhabit, you will be held accountable.

Our voices are powerful, our time is now, and their 15 minutes are up.  

We will see them in court.

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. “

                                                                                         -     Thomas Jefferson

Sep 25

Rally & Concert in Support of October 2011 “Stop the Machine” Movement

By andreaNo Comments

 

On September 24th 2011 a special rally was held at the Nyumburu Amphitheater for support the October 2011 “Stop the Machine” movement. This rally featured Dr. Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zesse, and Revolutionary Hip Hop group, The Coup!!! And of course…Your World News was there to support and cover this rally for a critically important movement on October 6, 2011 at Freedom Plaza, Washington DC—to Stop the Damn Machine!!!!

 

http://blip.tv/your-world-news/rally-to-stop-the-damn-corporate-machine-fight-the-power-5585302

 

Sep 11

Obama Style Stimulus

By andreaNo Comments

by Stephen Lendman

Obama’s leadership is defined by lawlessness, serial lying and betrayal of the public trust.

For ordinary Americans, his new proposal amounts to a combination left hook, right cross haymaker, decking workers when they need uplifting.

His September 8 “American Jobs Act” address to Congress, in fact, demonstrated his contempt for working households and their ability to see through another thinly veiled wealth transfer scheme to corporate favorites and super-rich elites already with too much.

In a word, it was more same old, same old – a disgraceful laundry list of handouts instead of measures to create jobs, stimulate growth, reinvigorate Main Street, strengthen America’s middle class, and help growing millions of impoverished, disadvantaged households most in need.

None of that was anywhere in sight nor will political Washington agree to it.

No matter. On September 8, New York Times writer Mark Landler headlined, “Obama Challenges Congress on Job Plan,” saying:

“….Obama challenged lawmakers on Thursday to ‘pass this jobs bill’ – a blunt call….to enact his $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending, designed to revive a stalling economy and his own political standing.”

Fact check

Tax cuts never create jobs, especially ones for the rich. The Bush 2001 ones, extended in 2006, and again by Obama in 2010 didn’t increase investments or employment.

If extended or increased now, they’ll continue the decades long historic income shift from middle and working class households to corporate favorites and America’s super-rich.

That’s the crux of Obama’s plan along with deeper austerity cuts, burdening ordinary Americans with the onus of paying for what should be earmarked for them.

Nonetheless, Obama told Congress to “pass this jobs plan right away….The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis (created by him, Bush and previous administrations), we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy (read its top 1% only).”

Omitting details, he insisted that everything he proposes will be paid for by increased austerity, including entitlement and Medicaid cuts, harming America’s retired, disabled and poor, getting nothing back in return.

Some plan! Yet Obama insisted he’s “pretty sure (he) know(s) what most Americans would choose. It’s not even close….we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives.”

In fact, most everything he proposed will exacerbate today’s crisis, not alleviate it for working households.

A same day Times editorial headlined, “The Jobs Speech,” saying:

Obama’s proposal was more “ambitious….robust and far-reaching than expected – that may be the first crucial step in reigniting the economy….”

“(H)e was authoritative in demanding that Congress pass his plan quickly….We hope Mr. Obama keeps his promise to take his proposals all over the country. The need to act is urgent.”

Fact check

Only the last statement was worthy in an editorial best rebuked for not explaining who benefits at whose expense.

Economist Jack Rasmus, a Progressive Radio News Hour regular, did it well, headlining his analysis of Obama’s proposal “Why Less is More of the Same,” saying:

Obama’s “Jobs Act” was another weak-kneed combination of inadequate spending, “wrong composition and targets, and bad timing.”

In fact, no matter how it’s directed, $447 billion “won’t achieve the job creation it claims.” It’s more of the same too little, too late “for an economy in as deep an economic hole as it is, and (one) facing growing downward momentum at home in the context of a global economy also rapidly” sinking.

In February 2009, when Obama proposed $787 in economic stimulus, unemployment was about 25 million. Two and a half years later, it’s the same. How then can half a loaf do now what double it earlier couldn’t. It won’t nor is that its intention, what America’s media won’t explain.

In fact, it’s more a reelection than jobs creation plan if voters are dumb enough to buy it. Hopefully they’ll understand how it harms them.

Moreover, Obama’s current plan is “seriously deficient” as was his 2009 proposal. Both featured non-job creating tax cuts. “Then and now, tax cuts simply cannot and will not create jobs,” especially given the depth of America’s troubles. Yet tax cuts comprise 60% of his plan.

Despite well over $1 trillion in tax cuts in the last two years, zero jobs were created – in fact, less than zero when factoring in the replacement of full-time higher-paying jobs for uncertain lower wage/low or no benefit temporary or part-time ones.

George Bush’s jobless recovery is a case in point. From 2001 – 2004, around $3 trillion in tax cuts were largely comprised of capital gains, dividends, estate tax relief, business depreciation, and other corporate handouts.

Over 80% went to America’s wealthiest 20%. In fact, most of it went to the top 5% and 1%, America’s most disadvantaged nearly entirely left out.

As a result, “(w)e had the longest jobless recession in US history up to that point. It took 46 months just to recover” to 2001 levels. Moreover, most jobs created were in finance and housing when speculative excess helped them boom.

At the same time, millions of high pay/good benefit manufacturing jobs were lost, offshored to low wage economies where they remained.

Besides ineffective tax cuts, Obama also proposed state subsidies as in 2009 to create jobs. In fact, since then, hundreds of thousands of state and local government layoffs followed, continuing monthly.

In 2009, $100 billion was allocated for infrastructure spending to create four million jobs. It didn’t happen. In June 2009, 6.4 construction workers were employed. Today it’s less than 5.5 million.

Obama’s new plan is no better. Immediate job creation is needed. Construction and infrastructure ones are long-term and won’t help over any duration when boosted by minimal funding.

His plan to subsidize small business hiring is also flawed. Besides minimal government help, bank loans are needed at a time their availability have declined for “15 consecutive months.”

Washington’s too-big-to fail bailout didn’t restart lending. Like big corporations hoarding $2 trillion, so are major banks in cash reserves they’ve used for speculation, not  credit to stimulate economic growth and create jobs.

An effective plan would let small business, responsible for most job creation, borrow directly from the federal government at near zero percent interest like major banks do from the Fed they own so effectively get free money.

After House Republicans massage Obama’s plan they’ll likely cherry-pick business tax cuts they like best and add more, leaving working households worse off than before because deeper austerity cuts coming will pay for them as well as America’s imperial wars.

As a result, Rasmus appropriately renamed Obama’s plan “The Business Tax Expansion Act of 2011.” Republicans love its selected parts. So do Democrats by going along, especially with 2012 priorities in mind to be reelected by making core constituencies believe harming them is helpful.

Today’s political Washington doesn’t prioritize job creation and economic growth, just the illusion they’re promoted when, in fact, shifting America’s wealth to its most well-off comes first, along with letting working households bear the burden of paying taxes corporate favorites and super-rich elites avoid.

That’s the America Obama wants continued and intensified to entirely destroy America’s middle class – that is, what’s left of it.

A Final Comment

Last year, Congress declared a destructive payroll tax holiday for workers by cutting the rate from 6.2% to 4.2% for one year. Doing so, in fact, drained hundreds of billions from the Social Security Trust Fund.

As a result, it was irreparably weakened in its ability to pay future benefits. The idea, in fact, is to destroy the program altogether, perhaps first by privatizing it.

It’s easy to cut taxes, hard to restore them, especially when economic conditions are weak.  Maintaining the lower rates indefinitely will cause massive benefit cuts before eliminating them altogether.

When the original Social Security Act passed in 1935, Franklin Roosevelt pledged the following:

“We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.”

FDR never met Obama or congressional Republicans and Democrats. What he gave, they’ll end, violating a government-mandated right.

A payroll tax holiday is another step toward privatization. It’s a sure way to kill it, the way 401(k)s destroyed private pensions, leaving workers at the mercy of marketplace uncertainties able to wipe out life savings during hard times.

Nonetheless, Obama proposed more of the same. By so doing, he’ll exacerbate a bad idea by reducing the current 4.2% to 3.1% in 2012 and giving employers the same benefit and more.

For them, he also proposed a complete tax holiday for new hires as well as on wage increases for current staff. In addition, his plan includes tax cuts for hiring the long-term unemployed and veterans out of work six months or more.

Expect the usual pundits and “experts” to hail the idea as an effective way to create jobs when, in fact, Obama’s entire plan may end up destroying them along with irreparably weakening Social Security.

A payroll tax holiday or cut any time is a bad idea, besides doing nothing to create jobs. What’s needed, in fact, wasn’t proposed by either Bush, Obama or Congress.

It requires large amounts of stimulus spending for economic growth. If effectively directed, it can sustain it inflation free the way colonial America did for 25 years before British banks co-opted their money creation power.

So did Lincoln with government created money, turning America into the world’s greatest industrial giant by launching the steel industry, a continental railroad system, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools, as well as much more.

In fact, America’s post-Civil War years were its greatest growth period before the Fed’s 1913 creation, giving bankers money power only governments should have.

Taking it back, of course, is key to sustained long-term prosperity. At this time, other steps in the right direction are compromised as long as Wall Street controls the nation’s money.

It also controls government. Unless that changes, expect political Washington to keep shifting the nation’s wealth from those who need it most to corporate favorites and others already with too much.

As a result, America’s epitaph one day may read it’s how an economic/military powerhouse hollowed out in disrepair, long surpassed by other industrial giants that understood good policies and instituted them.

Under Obama’s plan and others like it, it’s not only assured, it’s accelerating.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

 

Sep 07

Israeli Oppression Continues While Talking Peace

By andreaNo Comments

by Stephen Lendman 

No wonder Palestinians want and deserve statehood, as well as full UN membership to be able to seek World Court redress, and be able to sue under Genocide Convention provisions, and why not.  

Israel’s lawless hypocrisy is shameless given what goes on daily – bombings, killings, mass arrests, settlement expansions, dispossessions, and other civil and human rights abuses on an ongoing basis. More on that below. 

On September 5, ahead of the September General Assembly meeting, Netanuyahu predictably said he wants peace talks restarted with no chance whatever of succeeding like all previous attempts for decades because Israeli violence is official policy. 

Nonetheless, after meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Yyves Leterme, he said: 

Abbas “can come to Jerusalem. I could go to Ramallah, or we could both go to Brussels.” In fact, the proper response to a man spurning peace is go to hell, in diplomatic language, of course. 

Netanyahu’s gambit is another attempt to pressure Abbas to back off from seeking statehood and full UN membership.  

Plans to petition the General Assembly still stand, though perhaps with less resolve than earlier based on recent comments and a new “strategy.”   

Instead of seeking recognition within 1967 borders, 22% of sovereign Palestine, a new proposal seeks statehood with permanent borders to be determined in later negotiations with Israel. It still wants them as originally drafted, but with more flexibility.  

In other words, with enough wiggle room for Israel to maneuver Palestine into an unacceptable position it can’t refuse, the way Oslo turned out. It left Palestinian rights entirely out of the final agreement at the same time Israeli terror attacks continued then and now. 

Overnight Monday, Israeli planes raided an area west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. No injuries were reported. In recent weeks, numerous others killed or wounded scores of Gazans.  

The same day, Israeli forces detained 20 West Bank “wanted Palestinians,” for the crime perhaps of wanting freedom. 

Palestinian lawmaker Mohammed Abu Teir was also arrested and his home ransacked. Former PA Jerusalem affairs minister Khalid Abu Arafa expressed concern after Israel earlier revoked his city ID card.  

Then in December an Israeli court expelled him to Ramallah for the second time after imprisoning him for four months for ignoring a previous ban. At issue is his Hamas affiliation, Palestine’s legitimate government, wrongfully designated a terrorist organization. 

An August 30 B’Tselem report discussed earlier in the month incidents. On August 19, an Israeli missile killed Gaza City’s Mu’ataz Kreqa’, his two-year old son and brother Munzar. Others nearby were wounded. 

On August 19, a Gaza wastewater treatment facility, its main one, was bombed north of the Nuseirat refugee camp. It was one of many Israeli acts of vengeance against people for the crime of not being Jews. 

On August 25, the Beit Lahiya a-Salam Sports Club was bombed, belonging to Islamic Jihad. Two civilians were killed, another 20 wounded, and the attack destroyed much of the building used as a kindergarten and school. Nearby houses were also damaged. 

These and many other attacks are serious breaches of international law, yet Israel gets off every time with impunity. 

Israeli Mistreatment of Jews 

Growing numbers of Israeli Jews are also treated with disdain. An August 29 Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) report explained headlined, “Putting Israel’s Periphery in the Center,” saying: 

“The gaps between” Israel’s center and its so-called periphery “have reached an all-time high, as a result of government policy.” 

For example, the number of people with diabetes is four times higher among periphery located poor than wealthier center of Israel residents. The rate of families living in poverty is three times higher, and job seeker rate in the southern city of Kiryat Gat is triple the Tel Aviv figure. 

As a result, besides weeks of social justice protests in cities across Israel, an August 28 march left from the Yeruham local council in Israel’s south heading towards Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence. 

Yeruham Local Council head Michael Bitton and Amram Mitzna led it. Its purpose was to raise public awareness of extreme social injustice in Israel’s periphery. 

ACRI attorney Tali Nir, Director of its Social and Economic Rights Department, said: 

“(T)he economic logic, upon witch the Israeli economy is  founded, is based on the assumption that market forces will generate a trickle-down effect from the rich to the rest of Israel’s citizens. But this trickling is limited and meager.” 

“Thanks to the economic growth, wealth has been” concentrated in a few hands in Israeli’s center, “and does not reach the south, the north, or” even most Israelis in the center. 

“This is an inequality-promoting policy. The current socioeconomic policy helps those who are powerful to become even more powerful, and those who are weak to become even weaker.” 

Moreover, those in the middle keep getting weaker and are gradually “vanishing. Unfortunately, in recent years the term ‘periphery’ has begun to serve as a euphemism for the term ‘the majority of the citizens of Israel.’ “ 

How wide is the gap, ACRI asked? 

In 2008, Tel Aviv had 5.5 doctors per 1,000 persons compared to 1.6 in the North and 2.1 in the South per 1,000 population. 

In Israel’s center, the rate of “expert physicians” among doctors was 72%, 82% in Tel Aviv. In the North and South respectively, it was 58% and 57%. 

In Israel’s center, individuals with no private or supplementary health insurance was 11%. In Jerusalem it’s 31% and 23% in Israel’s North (except for less adequate public coverage). 

In Israel center, 6% of its residents skipped a doctor appointment because of cost. In Israel’s North, it was 16%, 12% in Jerusalem, and 10% in the South. 

Diabetes among wealthy Israeli is 4%. Among Ethiopian immigrants, it’s 17%. In Ethiopia, it was zero. Among Israel’s poor, it’s 16%. 

Average life expectancy in the wealthy city of Raanana is 83.7 years. In Nazareth, a northern Arab city, it’s 75.7 years. 

In 2009, those eligible for a high school diploma was 66%. In Raanana, it’s 76% In poorer areas, it’s 47.3% and among Arab Israelis it’s 34.4%. In Lod, it’s 37%. 

For the 2008-09 academic year, the college graduate rate among 20 – 29 year olds in Tel Aviv was about 20%. In Or Yehuda, it was about 9%. 

In 2009, poverty in Israel’s center was 13%. In Jerusalem it was 33.7%, 32.3% in the North and 23.6% in the South. 

In 2009, the percent of workers paid less than minimum wage was 35.5% in Israel’s center and 38% in Tel Aviv. In Jerusalem it was 45.7%, 44.9% in the North and 44.1% in the South. 

In 2010, 3.1% of Tel Aviv residents were job seekers. In Kiryat Gar, it was 10.4%. 

In 2007, 57% of workers in high tech jobs lived in Tel Aviv and other Israeli center cities. Only 5% live in Jerusalem and its surroundings. 

In 2008, 0.83% of Tel Aviv area residents got income support. In Kiryat Malachi, it was 3.83%. 

In 2008, 140.7 applications per 1,000 population sought social services help in Israel’s center. In its periphery, it was 184.2. 

In the past decade, Israel’s high tech industry thrived mainly in its center. Not only don’t periphery residents benefit, they aren’t getting the required education or training to do it. 

As a result, a self-perpetuating socio-economic gap defines the two areas. According to University of Haifa Dean of the education faculty Ofra Mayseless: 

“You have a shortage of good teachers, a lack of laboratories and facilities, less choice of subjects, and it translates to lower levels of opportunities” in periphery areas. 

Despite various efforts to improve opportunities through special programs outside of conventional classrooms, most education leading to high tech and other good employment takes place in them. 

As a result, for periphery areas to keep up, resources must be allocated for them. Efforts are being made to do it, but much more needs to be done. 

So far, Israel’s wealth gap and privileges with it remain extreme, leaving most Jews socially and economically deprived. 

It’s shown up for weeks with hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting for long denied social justice they’ll have a long struggle ahead to get because Netanyahu and other officials will go to extremes to deny them. 

Only continued pressure may turn the tide. It remains to be seen if most Israelis are in the struggle for the long haul. It’s their only chance. 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. 

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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